Nokia: Coulda-beena-contender

An illuminating piece on Nokia and Google in the Herald Tribune.

Link: Nokia says it was far ahead of Google on new cellphone technology – International Herald Tribune

When Google announced its plans in October to revolutionize the software of cellular phones, few were more eager to hear the details than the industry titans at Nokia. They still are.

“We’ve seen an announcement,” Nokia’s chief executive, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, said with a spoonful of sarcasm. “Conceptually, we could have made that announcement a long time ago.”

For a decade, Kallasvuo noted during a recent interview here, Nokia has had its own army of software developers, writing applications for the next generation of mobile telephone services. On the face of it, that is little different from what Google plans to do with Android, an open-source platform for software that aims to transform the mobile phone into a pocket PC.

I’m encouraged by the noises that Nokia are beginning to make. Ovi looks interesting. The deal between them and Vodafone could be a good one.

I really want to see a lot, lot LOT more from Nokia. I trust that Ovi won’t be a rehashed Club Nokia. I hope that their Universal Music deal won’t be hampered by annoying hardware glitches (or worse, stupid intended programming by the Nokia phone chaps — witness the slow-as-anything Nokia N95).

I reckon Nokia have seen the light. The writing on the wall. I reckon — or I hope, that their management have taken a very close look at the shite (and let’s face it, in the context of where the mobile industry is currently and the nonsense they’ve been shipping now and again, it is shite) that they’ve been foisting upon the market place and have decided to change things around.

It’s no longer good enough to knock out a N95 style device that doesn’t work properly with pictures or music. I do go on about it — but I abhor how Nokia’s music player works. It’s not a biggie, I know. But then I was sat thinking the N95 was a piece of brilliance (in the context of a camera) until I began to realise that my friends with Sony Ericsson K800s were taking five or six excellent quality pictures in the space of time it took for me to take one. Silly, silly annoying things like that, which COULD have been sorted before the device went to market and have only just been rectified in recent firmware updates. That no one knows how to install.

I’m upbeat anyway. There’s a lot to admire from them. I’ll give it six months and re-evaluate to see how they get on with their next raft of new devices. Here’s hoping.